1983 · Behind the Songs
The biggest hit of 1983 is also its most misunderstood — a ballad of obsession, not devotion.
Sting wrote it in the middle of the night as his marriage was collapsing, and the Police recorded it as the band itself was falling apart. The lyric watches, waits, follows — a stalker’s monologue set to one of the prettiest melodies ever written.
The irony is the engine: millions heard a wedding song while Sting insisted it was sinister. Summers’ chiming guitar riff — written in one take — and Copeland’s restrained pulse give surveillance a lullaby’s clothing.
It spent eight weeks at number one in America, won Song of the Year at the Grammys, and became one of the most-played songs in radio history. Few records have ever been so loved and so misunderstood at once.
Beauty and menace, inseparable — the Police’s final masterpiece, and their most haunting.